Circles, Spirals, and Straight Lines

Some people seem to know who they are and what they want from life right from the get-go. God bless them. I’ve often wished I would’ve been born one of them. They are straight-liners. They set out for a goal, accomplish the goal, then set another. As long as there’s another mountain to climb, they’re happy campers.

Others are content with a circle of repetition that never really goes anywhere. Maybe an okay job, or an okay marriage, or an okay spiritual life. They don’t make waves, and they don’t put on airs. They go round and round and round… sometimes really wanting to take a risk or make a change, but never figuring out how to break the pattern.

CC Graphic by Tony Kay (cropped)

Me, I’m a spiral sort of guy. From a short-term perspective, my path looks like a circle. I’ll go day after day or month after month focused on a project or thought, wrestling with it like Jacob with the angel… until I finally get the blessing from it.

Sometimes that blessing is a new understanding or a new skill. Sometimes it’s the realization that something I thought I wanted isn’t what I needed. Sometimes, there’s a breakthrough that dramatically changes my direction. My life is a spiral, consistently headed towards home.

Here’s what The DEEP does: It takes circles and spirals and helps them get a taste of the solid direction straightliners have. And it helps straightliners get a taste of what the circles and spirals see.

Everybody needs something. None of us has it all figured out or has it all in a bucket. We need one another. That’s what The DEEP does: It helps us grow. It helps us mature. It helps us do what we’ve never been able to do before.